Sunday, November 18, 2018

After an excellent demo over a year ago, I have had my sights set on an Ozone Edge v9 as my next potential kite. The problem had been that the 10m Edge that I tested felt like it provided the power of my 14m Bandit, yet nimble like my 10m Bandit. Do I get one kite that replaces both? I wasn't willing to give up on the Bandits that soon. Fast forward a good 9 months and the Bandit's had their fair share of running repairs that kept them out of the sky. It finally feels like the maintenance is going to be costing more than replacement. The last piece to fall was a bit of a discount through Wardy.

The first session was great. 10.1m jump off a pretty average session (maybe 18Kn winds) at Elliott. I'd settled on a slightly larger 11m Edge to mainly knock out the 14m Bandit and keep just a bit more sail up in the sky for boosting in the standard 20kn range, and it immediately felt like it was going to bring in the height department.

Unfortunately the next few outings were in lighter winds, and it wasn't as good at the low range as expected. Admittedly I was sometimes the only one out on the 11 when others on 12's and 14's were parking, but it didn't quite have the bottom end of the 14 Bandit as I'd hoped.

18th November was the weekend I was waiting for; steady 20+Kn winds with a full tide to really push the kite into boost mode. After 2 hours on the water I came in and downloaded the woo stats hoping for at least a new personal best. C'mon, 10.5 metres! 12 possibly? The reading floored me. 13.7 metres! a new PB by over 3.5m. Maybe an outlier? Nope, analysis of the session showed several boosts over 12m and the 11 over 11m badge. YES!

As it happened the day was also the QLD boosting comp down in Brisbane. I kept refreshing to see the boosts come in and was pleasantly surprised that they maxed out at 11m. WINNING! Granted I wasn't at the event to share the exact conditions and had over 2 hours to put in a good one, but it looked from the reports to be close enough to give me hope I'm in the right ballpark. Maybe February's Wind Slasher and state freestyle titles might have a boost off?

The day rolled into night and I stayed above the rest. More due to WA missing out on their normal 25+ winds than anything else kept me and David (boosting at Lake Weyba just down the coast) out in front to claim my first (and probably only) daily win on the woo charts:

Another notable improvement was my overall rank. previously a 10.2m still had me in the bottom 33% of all Woo owners, but moving to 13.7m put me right up into the top 20%. There must be a massive bubble of people about the 11-12m mark, which likely means that there's a typical peak jump on standard equipment at that mark. The Edge is certainly the catalyst for going bigger as my technique hasn't changed much in the past 2 years.

Also notable was that I still has the Edge fully powered all session. I'm pretty sure I can hold down another 5Kn, which means going higher is definitely possible.